Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

26 September 2016

Skyline To

I went down to Barrio Logan for The Little Big Art Show at La Bodega Gallery over the weekend. Truthfully, it’s likely the only art thing I’ve been to in San Diego for at least ten years. I was curious what the crowd would be like mostly. Short answer: the same as anywhere else! Although maybe it skewed a little older than I expected. Then again who am I to talk about age?

And while on the subject, support Susie's campaign against Francesa's, who has been ripping off indie designer's designs for their own store. Susie has long been a champion of artists' rights and what Francesca's (among many other companies) is doing is just deplorable. There's more than one way to draw a cat but Francesca's just had to steal Susie's eh? If you're against rip offs, go support Susie!
While shopping at a nearby record shop before the art show, I grabbed a zine about Indian casinos and a short self-published book about cholos in college. Published in the Eighties, this book seemed intriguing on the surface but I read it and basically wanted to puke. The author was not from the community, didn't present things in an anthropological manner, and the whole thing was basically a self-congratulatory ode to himself: a professor who played self-styled savior for gangsters from the area. Big pat on the back! I would quote from the book directly but it’s just too much and I wouldn’t want to shine any light on this terrible tome.

Whew, that felt good. It’s rare you read something that makes you so angry right? I mean, offline that is. The main issue with the book was how condescending it was, and you guessed it, it’s a white dude trying to show how “down" he was, with all the lingo set off by quotes. Trash, absolute trash. But at least I’m one book closer to fiftyfifty. I’m currently at 18 books and 44 movies. I’m behind on books obviously but there’s an outside chance I could cross the finish line if I shape up for the rest of the year.

And since I’ve yet to talk any books in 2016, let’s plug some! First up, I can’t stop shutting up and recommending Ted Chiang’s short stories to people. I went to go see him speak at AAWW a few months ago but finally finished his collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others. The titular story is brilliant, as well as many others, but the one that really caught my attention was "The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate," about a mirror that enables time travel. Anyway, go read this book! And then get ready for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, which stars Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, and looks downright amazing.
And speaking of New York, I finally got around to reading Asterios Polyp, a graphic novel that my friend highly recommended years ago. So long ago that I think we were both still living San Franciso. Anyway, Asterios Polyp really is great, even if the plot seems a little under hatched. But the art style and thematic elements are so strong. Everyone says it gets better with each read, and I’m excited to dig into it again.
Also on the graphic novel tip, I got the first volume of Monstress, written by Marjorie Liu with art by Sana Takeda, aka two Asian-American women putting out a comic book in an overwhelmingly male dominated industry. (I mean, what industry isn't right?) The fantasy world they’ve created is filled with intriguing characters, a two-tailed cat, and when you're done you'll just with there was more Monstress to catch up on.
And although I haven't left the house much recently, I did get out to La Jolla Playhouse to watch Tiger Style!, a play from Mike Lew about growing up Chinese-American. You can see how it was right up my alley… And it proved to be exactly what I wanted: witty and arcastic, unapologetically direct about ethnicity and race, and very very funny. The line that sums Tiger Style! up perfectly, as spoken by a U.S. customs officer who is giving two characters a hard time and refuting their calls of discrimination: “I don’t hear race."
It’s been a pretty bad year for movies but I can recommend Dearest on Netflix and Hell or High Water in the theater. The latter is a neo-Western about two bank robbers down on their luck, and Dearest is a powerful “based on a true story” account of child abduction in China. Both are real crowd pleasers! Okay, don’t quote me on that...

And last thing, my friend Cindy wrote a cyberpunk YA novel set in near future Taipei. WANT features an Asian-American male on the cover. And I repeat: An Asian-American male on the cover. I stopped updating my CoverMale Pinterest board two years ago, but WANT would have been a fine edition. Just look at that beauty. And did I say it’s set in Taipei?! I can't wait to read this thing.

07 March 2013

Destroy All Everything

Listening to: Soko, "I'll Kill Her." From AMR via Et Musique Pour Toi, the most charming track about annihilating your ex's new object of affection. "If I find her, I swear, I swear… / I'll kill her, I'll kill her / She stole my future, she broke my dream."

Completely missed City Bakery's annual hot chocolate festival, which ran during Februrary and featured mysterious flavors such as Sunken Treasure, Love Potion, and Ode to the Polar Bear. Regardless, I must scurry over there to get one of their giant marshmallows.

Things recently seen: Martha Graham's "Phaedra Unbound" and "Achilles in Heels" at the Joyce Theater. "Art of Scent" exhibit at Musem of Arts and Design, Museum of Chinese in America's "Marvels and Monsters," and then last night we hit up Punderdome 3000.

We got to the event late so we were relegated to the back, but it was still quite the experience. The wall art for the Littlefield Theater featured a springbok antelope as David Bowie and a white tiger homage to (possibly) Kenny Loggins. Some of the competitor's names were fantastic. Pun and Teller. Punda Express. Big Pun. The Black Punther. Punky Brewster. I think I'd like to have been "Josie and the Pundercats" or simply "The Pundercats" but those must have been used already. In-between each round, members from the audience recite classic TV theme songs, which was kind of awesome. "It's a rare condition, this day and age, to read any good news on the newspaper page..."
And let's talk about "Art of Scent," which was basically sticking your head into a giant butt in the wall. I mean, to put it in a classy way. On the real, the exhibit is beautifully designed and you go around the room smelling classics like Chanel No.5, Drakkar Noir, L'Eau d'Issey (my old college standby), and Light Blue by Dolce & Gabbana. After a short time though, you'll get woozy because all that perfume and cologne will send your head spinning. There was also a guy there inexplicably carrying a flute around and occasionally blowing a few notes into it. I should have asked him if I could give it a go. We could have battled.
The night after we saw Martha Graham, we met my friend's new boyfriend, who turned out to be an ex-ballerino. You can't imagine how excited I was. I wanted to get his professional opinion about the quality of dancing in White Nights and Center Stage, but I held back. Having no opinion on Martha just a few short hours ago, after talking to him, I was ready to dismiss Graham's work as "too obsessed with mythology." Yes, yes, right on! What can I say, I'm easily influenced.
Awhile ago, I sent in a pitch for the sequel to Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology, but that was summarily rejected. That sequel released late last year, Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology (Secret Identities). I have to pick up a copy and see what kind of stories beat mine out. I mean, besides all of them. My dream of writing a comic book will have to live on for another day. I won't give up because I'm tenacious like Lex Luthor, but unfortunately, far dumber.

Alongside "Marvels and Monsters" exhibit, MOCA also had "Alt.Comics: Asian American Artists Reinvent the Comic Book," featuring the works of Gene Luen Yang, Lark Pien, and GB Tran, Jason Shiga, and a few others. I'd tell you to go check it out but the whole thing is over, sorry. For me, it was most interesting to look at the artists' old works, before they were published. All the childhood drawings, the chapbooks, the sketches, it was quite interesting and makes me hope that one day someone will want to collect my archives. Any volunteers? Mom?
While we're here: Occasionally I drop in to post stuff on Chinatown Do, a Tumblr that covers anything Chinese related that the contributors see during their Internet rounds. I've never met any of the other blog people -- aside from Joy (Swash Design), who invited me -- but it's interesting to see what catches their individual attentions. Mine tend to be articles and stuff about factories, so I'm glad the others do lots of images and videos. I'd already been trained to stop at anything online mentioning "Chinese," so Chinatown Do has been a nice outlet to repost stuff.

Angry Asian Man has been going at it for twelve years, and last week he featured my friend's sister, Ursula Liang, as his Angry Reader of the Week. Ursula is making a documentary about 9-Man, a streetball game played in New York's Chinatown. They hit their Kickstarter goal last year and I'm looking forward to watching the finished product.

And if there haven't been enough links for you, two blogs I've been into lately: Writing Like an Asian and Eating Asia. Explore at your leisure.

31 July 2012

Need Your Love

Two days ago, Susie tweeted me that Jessica Hische had coined the term "procrastiworking." The idea is that "the work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life." So basically I should be web surfing and going through Google Reader as a job. Which is just dandy with me.

Jessica takes procrastiworking to new levels as her side projects are more amazing than most people's main projects. I want to individually link to everything I like of hers but there's just too much of it. Better you just explore her work yourself. Her website URL is jessicahische.is/awesome. Normally that might be a bit suspect but in her case it's absolutely 1000% true.

Technically Jessica's a letterer and illustrator -- who did the Moonrise Kingdom font, the Grantland Quarterly logotype, the cover for Dave Eggers' new book, and a few other projects you might recognize -- but I just love her websites. Look at that light up navigation on her main page. It's so wonderful. Okay now I'm just gushing.

I know that she doesn't do her own coding or anything, but she clearly knows what she wants and the online look she's after. Currently I'm working through her Don't Fear the Internet videos, as I've decided I need to step up my web creation game. As in, get some web creation game.

Hische popped up again yesterday when I saw that her wedding invite was being mocked on Gawker as the world's most hipster wedding announcement ever. Take a look: The Story of Jess & Russ.

I was mid-eye roll when I started noticing the names attached to the illustrations. Nicholas Felton, Chris Buzelli, Jilliam Tamaki, etc. What the heck was going on? Then I noticed how all the images moved, which was kind of cool. And maybe it was just HTML5 or Flash magic but color me impressed. Who were these people? Turns out "Jess" was Jessica Hische.

Of course.

Right then I committed my future self to sending something better than an Evite for my eventual (non-)wedding. The love of my life deserves better than just a mass email and Facebook event. With my newly gained skills from Hische's web tutorials, my lucky partner(s) and I will create an elaborate re/deconstruction of our journey together. It will, out of necessity, be short, mostly fictional, and gloss over all the fights and walk outs, but it will scroll automatically so damn prettily. Yes, I have been inspired by Jessica and all of her, well, life. I hope you will be too.
If you're into this stuff, here's some typography blogs to hang around the Internets with: I Love Typography, Friends of Type, and Beautiful Type. (Thanks Super Sonja!) And if you're really into this stuff, Kanye's "All of the Lights" video was apparently inspired by Gaspar Noe's vomit inducing opening to Enter the Void. Wait, why am I even talking about that movie. I hated it so hard.

In related news, my friend Kelvin is trying to coin the term "bedputer." Since nearly everyone already laptops in bed, I'm not sure how far this one is gonna go. Start using it though so he'll feel better. Also, another friend of mine is in the process of revamping his artist site right now. JMZ introduced me to Nik Daum's site. Daum sort of does everything. Drawing, photography, writing, art directing, music videos, advanced calculus, who knows what else. His web site even has a guestbook, how retro. Plus he's funny.

Yeah I know right? Fuck these people and their many talents. It's enough to make you want to bedpute.

21 November 2011

Show Me the Money

For some reason I completely missed out on Work of Art: The Next Great Artist last season. Well, there's probably a great reason, as I try to avoid TV when possible. However, I remain intrigued by a competitive reality show about producing art so I caught a few episodes of season two the other day.

Whatever you think about the role of an artist and their relationship to their work and the public, Work of Art doesn't capture it. Produced by the same people behind Project Runway and Top Chef, WoA suffers from something the other two do not: an end product you probably won't actually like. You can watch a fashion or cooking show and lust after the dresses or food, but with WoA, just seeing the finished pieces isn't enough to keep your attention.

I think this is because a show about art should concentrate more on process instead of result. Instead, the format of WoA's contrived weekly challenges tends to brush aside any possible insight by concentrating on interpersonal plot lines. Then again, how do you depict the creative process on-screen anyway? You could argue that it's an interesting show simply because it shows artists period. In order for people to support the arts, they have to know some artists maybe? Even under any microscope or format?

What will keep me coming back to Work of Art is the critiques which probably mirror real art school critiques in their harshness. Because I generally just viscerally react to a piece of art, I don't actually have the vocabulary to disparage something I don't like. Work of Art is helping me out in this regard tremendously. "This is so second hand surrealism. You failed to draw me in as a voyeur or a viewer."

The show also probably reflects a lot about the confusion of artists about how their pieces are judged. They think they went from concept to execution pretty well, and then get torn down by the panel. Inside the must be thinking "What do you know about art?!" In this case however, some of these judges purportedly do know a lot about art. Purportedly.
Most of the good art documentaries I've seen are retrospective, or have engaging protagonists or smart talking heads. Sadly some of the stuff I've been watching recently has been lacking. The short piece about the making of MOCA's recent Art in the Streets exhibit wasn't that good, despite my high expectations.

In that genre, I'd recommend Dirty Hands, the David Choi documentary ten times more. I'd also highly recommend checking out Art 21 from PBS, which is well produced and explores the working lives of contemporary artists. Start with this episode about Identity hosted by Steve Martin.

And I recently read this little book called "How to Start and Run a Commercial Art Gallery" and while I have no aspirations on doing any such a thing (unless you want to lend me a few million dollars), it was a really interesting look into the commerical side of the art world. I'm always curious who owns art galleries, or how they make any money, this book shed some insight into that.

08 July 2010

The Sound of Silence

Currently pushing: The artist who did the inset illustration is Nanami Cowdroy, originally from Australia. If I could, I would link you to everything she's done because it's just great stuff. Google her or check out this compilation and you'll see what I mean. She combines a few familiar elements and themes -- graffiti, gold fish, paper cranes -- but makes it all her own. My friend just bought some prints of hers and I can't wait to see them framed and displayed on his walls.

One of the endorsements from Slate's Culture Gabfest this week was music critic Robert Christgau's reviews. Christgau is known for his "terse capsule reviews," often summing up an entire album in less than a hundred words. A comprehensive collection of his stuff is being collected at his site. Make sure to read the User's Guide to the Consumer Guide and his grading system before diving in.

As a sample of his stuff, I checked the bands I normally cite as my favorites: Alanis Morissette, Gang Starr, Jewel, Tribe, and The Roots. Then I started just throwing random bands in there and found gems such as Christgau's review of Warren G's "Regulate...G Funk Era."
"Where his homeboy Snoop plays a well-chilled sociopath whose indifference to pain is the centerpiece of his carefully plotted menace, Dr. Dre's kid half-brother is more like a mischievous seventh-grader. Giggling at Bootsy's funny glasses one minute, selling crack on the corner the next, he could go either way, or both in tandem. His cool and his tough are less practiced, less cocksure, hence more dangerous -- and more tragic. Teamed with the tunefully murderous Nate Dogg, he's nasty in a new, neurotic way. Giving work to the Twinz or Dove Shack, he's one more G."
There's a lot of great stuff in there, even if the reviews are light on the current stuff (mainly because they seem to be excerpts and maybe there are permission issues?). For example, there's only four words given to Jason Mraz and just one sentence for La Roux. Then again, maybe Christgau's just getting more concise as his reviews of John Mayer's oeuvre demonstrates that less is often enough. Recent reviews include A-minuses for Tegan and Sara, Girls, LCD Soundsystem and The National. Plus a sterling A for The xx, who I've been getting into.

The RSS feed for Christgau's MSN Music hosted reviews is a must add. It isn't easy to sum up an album, a movie, a book, a person, anything, in less than a hundred words but Christgau has made it an art form.

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